“Mr Pizza and All That Jazz”  is the light-hearted title of his autobiography, but somehow I never thought it entirely did justice to my dear friend Peter Boizot. Of course, he introduced pizza, as well as Italian beer, to the British people, and he did a lot for jazz music and musicians – but he also did a good deal more.

I was first introduced to Peter by a mutual good friend, Lord Charles Spencer Churchill. That was around 40 years ago when, looking as elegant as ever, Peter attended the opening gala night of a show I was presenting at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, starring two of his favourite jazz artistes, Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson .

I remember that evening well, and from that night on, I am privileged to say that Peter and I remained firm friends for some four decades to come – largely, I have to say, through our mutual love of music, women, and Peter’s favourite tipple, champagne.

Of course, Peter will forever be feted as the legendary founder of Pizza Express, which he proudly claimed was founded “without a business plan” in 1965, at a time when even such cognoscenti as the Chairman of the Royal Automobile Club had to ask him “What is a pizza?”.

In 1993, he eventually (and very successfully) sold the company to city entrepreneur Luke Johnson, assisted in no small measure, it must be said, by his loyal and financially astute nephew, Matthew Allen: by his own admission, Peter was a visionary, but not a natural businessman.

Indeed, until his death in 2018 at the age of 89, Peter remained the revered president of the Pizza Express company. The present Chinese owners, who later bought in at a reported figure of some £900m, still insist that his portrait is displayed in every Pizza Express, of which there are now some 600 worldwide – but, in his remarkable life, Peter had many more strings to his bow.

When people ask me about Peter, I usually explain that he was a Cambridge graduate who created the first real quality pizza restaurant brand in the UK, developed it successfully, made a personal fortune of some £35 million, and then spent it all. But, I hasten to add, he spent hardly any of it on himself.

So these are just a few examples of Peter’s generosity and commitment to his passions and beloved hometown, Peterborough, over the years that he and I were good friends:

I think perhaps a good start would be Peterborough United Football Club, familiarly known as The Posh. Peter was less interested in football than he was in hockey, which he played until the ripe old age of 70, but when it became clear that The Posh had serious need of investment, he promptly stepped up to the plate, bought the club, and invested substantially in it.

On top of the purchase price, it cost him personally around £1 million a year for some 10 years to keep the club afloat. He was the man who saved The Posh, and saw them on to bigger and better things, though I don’t think that this was always fully appreciated.

Peter believed that Peterborough had need of a good modern theatre, and so he built one: a multi-purpose 1200 seat theatre. This project overran financially by quite a lot and apparently ended up setting him back around £11 million – a ludicrous amount for a provincial theatre, but no expense was spared to create a real “state-of-the art” offering for the good citizens of Peterborough.

He was a significant party donor and very active in local politics and, being a staunch supporter of the Liberal Party, he twice stood as the Liberal candidate for Peterborough, his slogan being “Peter Boizot – From Peterborough, For Peterborough”.

For his “sins in life” Peter was also a staunch financial supporter of the magnificent Peterborough Cathedral, in which he was once a choirboy and where I had the privilege of giving his eulogy to some 1 000 people at Peter’s memorial service, which was also covered by local TV.

But, while Peter did more than enough to be granted the Freedom of City of Peterborough, which he duly received, he did not confine his benevolence to his hometown. He went much further than that.

He founded and funded The Soho Jazz Festival to support and promote two of his other great passions: jazz music and the village of Soho, where in 1965 he opened his first Pizza Express, in Wardour Street, and reinvented the famous Soho landmark bar, Kettner’s.

He gave London two of its best-known and best-loved music rooms, Pizza Express Dean Street and Pizza on the Park, which offered artistes and musicians from both sides of the Atlantic the opportunity to perform in one of very few  intimate rooms in London, and played host to many great jazz artistes and musical celebrities from Jamie Cullum to Liza Minelli, and even to Mussolini’s youngest son Romano, actually a fine jazz pianist!

He sponsored our England hockey team, who went on to win Gold at the Olympic Games, and of course, he had the inspired idea of supporting the Venice in Peril Fund, another city he loved, by creating a special pizza, the Veneziana, and contributing a small sum for every Veneziana sold in Pizza Express throughout the country. This eventually raised more than a million pounds for the fund, and Peter’s well deserved reward for this unique donation was to receive Italy’s civilian honour, the title of Cavaliere Ufficiale. It could not have gone to a better man.